Artist: Reinhard Mucha

Luhring Augustine presents Reinhard Mucha’s Before the Wall came down / Lennep [2013] 2008 / 2009, on view in the Chelsea gallery concurrently with the Joanne Leonard & Brittany Nelson exhibition.

For decades, Mucha’s celebrated multifaceted practice has delved into themes of collective memory, history-making, and structures of power. His insightful examinations of cultural systems, particularly those related to the complex history of his native Germany, call forth critical conversations surrounding institutions and politics of display. Composited by Mucha with a formal rigor that nods to Minimalism, his assemblages of raw materials and found objects – wood, aluminum, flooring, footstools, carpenter rulers – elude explicit reading or meaning. The arrangement is the beginning: abstracted and recontextualized from their original functions, the materials are elevated and transformed in this new condition that releases their latent nostalgic, intellectual, and narrative potential. Mucha’s “history and memory boxes” (Hans-Jürgen Hafner (1)) are vessels with networks of references that speak not only to his own biography, but also that of the collective history and culture.

About the artist

Reinhard Mucha was born in Düsseldorf, Germany in 1950. He studied at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art under Klaus Rinke, developing his unique practice, later having seminal exhibitions of his work in the 1980s and 1990s. Such exhibitions include Gladbeck, his solo exhibition at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris in 1986; Das Deutschlandgerät at the 44th Venice Biennale in 1990, and on view since 2002 at Kunstsammlung NRW, Düsseldorf; Dokumente I – IV at documenta IX, Kassel in 1992; Mutterseelenallein at the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt a. M. in 1991-1999, and on view since 2009 at Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin; Wartesaal at documenta X, Kassel in 1997; and Stockholmer Raum, (Für Rafael Moneo), at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm and at Luhring Augustine, New York in 1998-1999. The most recent exhibition, “Der Mucha: An Initial Suspicion” was a major presentation at the Kunstammlung Düsseldorf in 2022. Mucha’s work is included in the permanent collections of numerous international public institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; Staatlich Museen zu Berlin / Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; Musée national d’art modern, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Art Institute of Chicago; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Städelmuseum, Frankfurt a. M.; Castello di Rivoli, Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin; Rubell Family Collection, Miami; Glenstone Collection, Potomac; and Kunstmuseum Basel. Mucha resides in Düsseldorf, Germany and in Saint- Haon-le-Vieux, France.

(1) Hafner, Hans-Jürgen. “Der Mucha – Ein Anfangsverdacht: Der Anti-Kiefer.” Artmagazine, 19 October 2022, artmagazine.cc/content121242.html.

Before the Wall came down / Lennep, [2013] 2008 / 2009
Two-part work ensemble

Free-standing sculpture
Before the Wall came down, 2008
Solid wood, float glass (display case), oil paint print on bituminized feltbase (flooring, found material) on blockboard (pedestal), bronze cast, wood, graphite facing (2 footstools), aluminum (126 folding rulers)
71.9 x 30.3 x 20.5 inches
(182.6 x 77 x 52 cm)

Wall-mounted sculpture
Lennep, 2009
Aluminum profiles, float glass, alkyd enamel painted on reverse of glass, oil paint print on bituminized feltbase (flooring, found material), panel door with hinges synthetic resin paint, solid wood (split found object), felt, blockboard
52.5 x 132.5 x 18.9 inches
(133.3 x 336.5 x 48 cm)

© muchaArchive / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York.